116 animal, vegetable, miracle
arteries functional” and left the kids huffi ng and puffi ng (fashionably) in
the dust.
Nobody should need science to prove the obvious, but plenty of stud-
ies do show that regularly eating cheaply produced fast food and processed
snack foods slaps on extra pounds that increase the risks of diabetes, car-
diovascular harm, joint problems, and many cancers. As a country we’re
officially over the top: the majority of our food dollars buy those cheap
calories, and most of our citizens are medically compromised by weight
and inactivity. The incidence of obesity- associated diabetes has more than
doubled since 1990, with children the fastest- growing class of victims.
(The name had to be changed from “adult- onset” to “Type II” diabetes.)
One out of every three dollars we spend on health care, by some recent
estimates, is paying for the damage of bad eating habits. One out of every
seven specifically pays to assuage (but not cure) the multiple heartbreaks
of diabetes—kidney failure, strokes, blindness, amputated limbs.
An embarrassing but arguable point is that we’re applying deadly pri-
orities to our food budgets because we believe the commercials. Indus-
trial agriculture can promote its products on a supersized scale. Eighty
percent of the beef- packing industry is controlled by four companies; the
consolidation is exactly the same for soybean processing. With such vast
corporate budgets weighing in on the side of beef and added fats, it’s no
surprise that billions of dollars a year go into advertising fast food. The
surprise is how handsomely marketers recoup that investment: how suc-
cessfully they convince us that cheap food will make us happy.
How delusional are we, exactly? Insisting to farmers that our food has
to be cheap is like commanding a ten- year- old to choose a profession and
move out of the house now. It violates the spirit of the enterprise. It guar-
antees bad results. The economy of the arrangement will come around to
haunt you. Anyone with a working knowledge of children would see the
flaw in that parenting strategy. Similarly, it takes a farmer to understand
the analogous truth about food production—that time and care yield
quality that matters—and explain that to the rest of us. Industry will not,
but individual market growers can communicate concern that they’re
growing food in a way that’s healthy and safe, for people and a place. They